


Louis Tomlinson: The Formidable Comedian

by polaropposites



Series: Out Articles [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polaropposites/pseuds/polaropposites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He holds enough charisma to outshine his 4 partners, but uses it to hold them up instead. International Pop Star, a trendsetter, Louis talks about being the man child who kept it all together for true love.</p><p>My take on what I imagine an Out article featuring Louis would read like. Pretty much just a faux interview with a freshly out the closet Louis Tomlinson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Louis Tomlinson: The Formidable Comedian

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! I hope this doesn't disappoint.

After having met with Harry Styles, I was prepared to see the balcony and kitchen of their homey flat again, but Louis Tomlinson had something completely different in mind. We met in a park in the center of London, it was bustling with people and lacking any semblance of privacy. Yet, Louis seemed to fit right in, careful strides through the crowds as his voice carried over the noise.

Louis is a couple of years older than Harry and he doesn’t seem it. He is smaller and more playful -- the youth has yet to leave his face. However, much like Harry -- or maybe even different from Harry -- Louis’ words and strides have a presence only created by experience, life, growing up.

The moment he starts talking, I have trouble taking notes. The articles I write often carrying a heavy and serious tone, but Louis is bright and bubbly, despite his circumstances. The entire process seems casual, less daunting and pensive than all the ones I’ve had prior. Louis has a way with making people feel comfortable. A tool that has helped him assuredly. 

Louis Tomlinson’s journey is one much similar to his lover. He was a year older, but X-Factor was as much of a whirlwind experience for the eldest of One Direction. The process that would eventually sky rocket the band to fame was much less defining for the Doncaster native than it was for Harry. Louis understood that leaving his family was necessary to attain his dream.

“Unlike Hazza, I was prepared to leave already. I was in that age, fame or not, where I had to leave to go to uni or find work. I was desperate to move on with my life. I was already preparing to move away regardless of my success at my audition. It doesn’t mean I didn’t miss my mom,” he pauses. “I missed her so much; I missed my sisters. But I threw myself into the work, into my new life.” 

The into Harry goes unsaid as he smiles bashfully. Quickening the pace as though the speed in which we walk makes the sappy confessions and deep moments easier to convey.  
“It felt horrible leaving her to handle the divorce on her own, but I knew it was what she wanted. I knew it was what I had to do. She’s never made me feel as though I owe her or my sisters an apology for leaving” he continues.

Louis has numerous siblings, all sisters, so although the transition had a lot more testosterone, he was right at home with the kinship forming with his new bandmates. “We clicked from the start, all of us. We came together that week at the Bungalow. It actually made the distance between my mum and sisters easier. I gained another family.”  
“So was the transition easy?”

Louis eyebrows fly up as he chuckles, answering my question without really answering it. He shoves his hands in his pockets before responding. “It depends which transition you’re speaking of.”

My confusion must be evident on my face because he smiles at me and dives into stories of his equally sordid and fantastic past. Louis was very used to labels. He was frequently given new ones. Most often they were variations of boisterous, outgoing, maybe even obnoxious. He remembers being called class clown, his entire existence in school being based around being the entertainer.

“I never really noticed until now -- how my actions, and what people expected of me, but part of me wonders how much of Louis the teenage lad was defined by what was expected of him.”

Louis talks about how, to him, he was popular in high school. People knew of him, they supported him; he had an entire two rows of seats dedicated to his friends that would support him at shows, both his band and for his production of Grease. Some may think that he was the Prom King type, minus the sports. Yet, from his definition everything seems very High School Musical, blind acceptance of the different roles and interests everyone had.

“I’m sure there were things said,” Louis ponders. “I’m just not sure if I paid enough attention to hear them. Most of my friends were girls, it didn’t really click in my head that Stan was the only guy willing to deal with me. That maybe other people saw and condemned me for something I wasn’t even aware of yet. Or at the least wasn’t something that I accepted.”

Although Louis is a master of poker face, every time I ask about Harry he brightens instantly. Part of the issue from when they were in the closet was that the two couldn’t help but look infatuated with each other. I question him about defining, if he was one of the people that kept Harry on solid ground.

“Oh, I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. We were changing so much, we were defining each other. Finding out what kind of people we were. Finding out the people we were together. Trying to figure out what we could be together. We came from different backgrounds entirely so. Harry even though he’s younger to me, had it together from the moment we met. He’s always known who he is.”

We stop walking as Louis haphazardly tosses himself in the grass next to a bench where I take my seat. He jokes about how the position seems more like a trip to the therapist than an interview. 

We’ve talked in circles about his youth, everything going back to Harry, like he’s the focal point of Louis’ life. Louis lets his sexuality come up naturally, as it obviously hangs in the air as one of the transitions that maybe wasn’t so easy for him.

The casual air that has been apparent the entire interview seems to dissipate as we obviously start to touch on something that Louis doesn’t seem to be comfortable with. When I approach him with sexuality and how put off he seems by it, he adjusts himself, staring at the sky. It must feel like an accusation to him instead of an observation as he grimaces.

“I’m not like Haz. This, this entire situation has been hard and damaging.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “I’m trying to fix that, but when I came to my sexuality, when I approached it, it was after I met Harry. All of my discovery and acceptance was when we were signing contracts and doing interviews. When it came time for the talk, all I heard was no and that’s really hard to shake.”

“But you couldn’t really hide it could you? Even though you were uncomfortable with it? Or uncomfortable with how people’s opinions of you would change?”

“The thing I’ve learned throughout this entire experience is that when you love someone as much as Harry and I love each other, you can’t really hide it. It’s not to say I didn’t try to hide it. I tried to avoid looking at him and touching him, but it’s hard because I do love him and since we’re in the same band together he’s right there.”

The struggle was evident. If you watch old interviews or clips from concerts, you see moments where they reach out to touch each other and stop. There’s frowns and shakes of heads that tell the other to stop. There were even some instances where Louis points to the screen or interviewer to remind Harry that it was present. Yet, there were moments still captured throughout their career, despite trying to hide it.

“When we got tired it was so much harder to care about what other people thought of us or what we had to do. During the tour we were exhausted and Harry and I feed off of each other, so it couldn’t really be helped. I wasn’t uncomfortable with being gay. I was uncomfortable with it being my only label. I was uncomfortable with people taking us less seriously, being less interested, because that’s what I was told would happen.

“So you do think that your sexuality defines you?”

“No, not at all. The struggle has defined me, loving Harry has defined me, but being gay? No. It’s just the accusations that went unsaid when we were tossed about that made me think that it had to though. It’s why Harry raised his hand and I stayed silent. I never wanted being gay to be the only important part of me. I love Harry, but I also love singing and I love our career. I just don’t want to be the token gay boy in the band.”

I find myself shocked that Louis’ worry would be that token gay boy was his biggest label. The one label he’d be attached to for the rest of his life because he took a beard. When I mention it, another grimace settles on his face. 

“It was either me or Harry. I thought I was the stronger one. I thought I would handle it better. I’ve always underestimated what he could do. I never wanted one. I didn’t want to accept it. She was tossed in my face, in his face, and it was either beard together or no beard and apart.”

“Did you like Eleanor?”

“Eleanor was fine. I didn’t really have to like her. Although getting along was great, she wasn’t anything but another part of my job. It made developing a genuine friendship with her difficult. She was lovely. Eventually, I felt bad for her. I had found the love of my life and I was happy, but she’s in uni a time where you really meet people and couldn’t do anything for fear of breaking a contract.”

“You say you underestimated him. How?”

“Harry wears his heart on his sleeve. A bit literally in certain circumstances. I always thought that he would struggle with having to hide something, but the great thing about Harry,” Louis goes on, voice soft and full of love that I’ve never heard from someone so young. “The great thing about Harry is that he knows what he has and what he wants and what’s important to him and he never lets anything change that. He would go out, smile, hold a hand, but every night he came home and left all of it at the door. He’s so strong, so strong.”

“Did you expect for him to come out when he did?”

“When he did? No. But how he did? Definitely. Harry is smooth and charming and he’s everything I’m not. He’s brave. I figured he was going to get fed up and just say it and of course he didn’t say anything about me. He’s always believed it was about us doing it in our own time, which meant different times if he was ready and I wasn’t. It’s incredible, how he never got angry with me for not wanting to tell anyone. He’s so beyond his age in everything. He’s so patient and loving.”

Harry is the baby of the band, but Louis would agree that he acts the silliest -- the most immature. The only issue here is that upon talking with him, I discover that he handled and still handles a lot of the conversations with management and takes on a lot of the responsibility. 

“You often had your twitter used to dispel ‘Larry’ rumors and were often responsible for denying Larry in interviews. You were the spokesperson, was it by choice?”

The laugh that results from the question is almost mocking, maybe hysterical. “It was as much by choice as anything else. I knew that was one thing Harry couldn’t do. He was never able to look someone in the eye and say he didn’t love me. He couldn’t even say we weren’t in love. Anytime he was asked it had to be cut out of the interview because no one believed him, so it was my job. Plus, I had Eleanor, so it made more sense that I would be offended and want to make sure everyone knew I was straight.”

“Some of these moments turned the people who supported your relationship into enemies. Many of the shippers were furious with you and took to the internet after the bullshit tweet.”

“That was a rough time for me. I can honestly say that going on tumblr and checking the websites that were made for us helped me get through a lot. So when I saw that there were people who believed that I thought these things, it was heartbreaking. I had figured by then that people knew me, knew who I was, so they would know and understand I would never say anything about Harry like that.”

“But you never said no when they asked you to lie about your relationship with Harry.”

“Never could say no,” he replies, pulling at the grass that surrounds him. The experience was hard, I could tell by the way his jaw set. He was genuinely upset by the lack of trust. Louis seems to not want to be the bad guy, but he does what he has to. When I mention how great he was for doing all that he shrugs it off. Louis did the same things that he would praise any of the other guys for handling and simplifies it down to something that he has to do.

“I don’t think I deserve praise for handling our situations I’m the oldest. It’s just something that should happen. If anyone should’ve had a beard, it should’ve been me. I don’t see anything grand or great about what I did.”

“How did Liam, Niall, and Zayn feel?”

Louis’ face lights up again at the mention of his other bandmates. “They were nothing but supportive. We owe them a lot. There were times that they sat us down and just told us that we could come out and that they didn’t care if it affected sales or ruined their careers because it hurt them to see us so unhappy. They were everything we needed them to be and more.”

I remembered back to my interview with Harry and it seemed like one thing is true and probably will be true no matter which band member I talk to. These bandmates think the world of each other. Harry sang the praises of every other member and constantly talked down on his own success and Louis did the same. They were both most gracious with each other, but the love evident in these guys not only for their boyfriends, but their bandmates -- brothers -- is the most spectacular thing I’ve witnessed in a while.

“All five of you love each other a lot?”

“No question. I can’t imagine my life without those lads. I don’t know where Harry and I would be without them. Everyone jokes about how fate brought me Harry and I love Harry, but fate brought me Harry and three of my best mates in the world; X-Factor was good to me.”

X-Factor was indeed good to Louis and I can’t imagine a young man more worthy of it. There’s more love in Harry and Louis then I’ve seen in anyone else. What often takes people decades to learn and years of practice, they’ve managed to accomplish in a few short years. 

The rest of the interview is filled with banter. Louis telling stories and jokes to ease the tension. I mention how I’ll expect a marriage invite if they decide to spontaneously get married in New York City at some point. Louis’ smile is all that I need to confirm that it might be a possibility. 

“If you make me sound good, I’ll let you be the ringbearer,” Louis deadpans, his smile so genuine crinkles form beside his eyes. 

When we reach the end of the interview, he pops up and offers me a hand. I suddenly get the Peter Pan references that I’ve read all over the internet -- witness the whimsical, childish air he carries firsthand.

We walk back to my hotel, slower this time, confirming that the less personal the conversation, the more at ease Louis is. If there’s one thing I’ve discovered, other than Harry and Louis have the greatest love story of the century, it’s that there’s depth and love beyond measure in Louis Tomlinson.


End file.
